Quoting of Yeats
by twinsais
Summary: Short, introspective, and sweet, a Christmas fic I wrote purely because I was in the mood. An unusual but strangely attractive pairing.


Snow crunched softly under his boots as he made his way between the trees, and settled lightly on his shoulders, clinging to the soft wool of his coat and fine strands of black hair. Blackened branches, bare of the leaves and flowers that made them so beautiful in the warmer months, hung heavily blanketed in a thick dusting of flakes. The trees seemed sleepy and languid, hibernating until springtime. By contrast, Crawford felt sharpened by the cold, hyper-aware in surreal surroundings as he picked his way through the park with only the sound of his own footsteps for company. The silence was as clear as glass, the lake iced over. He could barely see Farfarello, pale as frost in his white coat with his hair hanging over the darker edge of the bench. His form resolved itself as he drew nearer and shifted slightly when Crawford brushed off the bit of wooden bench next to him with a leather-gloved hand and sat down.

Farfarello's head canted toward him, gaze steady.

Crawford draped an arm around his shoulders and the Irishman tucked himself under his arm, cheek resting against his shoulder, melting the snowflakes. The snow continued to fall, and for several long moments, there was no sound.

"It isn't good for you to be out here," Crawford said finally. "You'll get frostbite."

"Not if I prepare for it," Farfarello replied distantly.

He had no choice but to let that go. The man had survived - thrived, if he was being honest with himself - for five years without Crawford watching over his shoulder. He'd earned the right to dismiss such concerns.

"This is a beautiful spot," he said truthfully, letting his own cheek rest against soft white hair. "Peaceful."

Farfarello smiled against his shoulder. "Six millenia or more, men have walked to and fro upon the face of the earth and she has not troubled herself with our dealings. Nations rose and fell, civilizations vanished from war, plague, or famine. Our blood sinks down through her skin, into her bones, where we become part of her. And now we tear back the skin, wrench free the bones, poison the blood and the breath. Now we are no longer ignored. All that could have changed in a day, if not for Weiss. We could have turned The Wheel a full quarter-revolution and let it all be cleansed and reclaimed." He let out a soft, wistful sigh, breath frosting as soon as it left his lips. "Paradise, lost."

Crawford was quiet for a long time before responding. "Of course," he said slowly, "the tablets were lost in the collapse of the temple... but Fujimiya Aya is still alive and it may be possible for them to be... retrieved. We could have a second chance."

"If we do that," Farfarello said quietly, his English lilting with his musical accent, "We'd have to wait until after Eszet had been seen to. Until Weiss was no longer so close to us and we could steal it without interference. It settles ill with me to allow Eszet to retrieve it, even temporarily. I'd rather they never laid hands on it again. With a diving suit I could retrieve it myself." He shifted and his nose brushed Crawford's jaw line. His skin was cool.

"It's possible," Crawford agreed, letting his fingers wander down the length of Farfarello's throat, feeling the slight flutter of his heartbeat and the slow progress of his breath. "Not certain, but possible."

The Irishman's voice rasped. "Do you want to see that new world?" he wondered. "With our powers, we could survive Hell and walk in Eden. But you have always been a man of the modern age, or so I ken."

Snowflakes had settled on Farfarello's eyelashes, near-invisible in their natural camouflage. Crawford brushed them away and trailed his thumb over the concave circle of the eye-patch. "I dream as vividly as you do," he said meaningfully. "It was the same dream we all held in those times. For different reasons, perhaps, but the vision, the goal was the same. And I wanted it as badly as any of you." He sighed deeply, letting his frame settle against the bench. The wood creaked.

"We would have been beautiful," Far murmured against his shoulder, and Crawford squeezed him.

"We still are. Let Eszet come and test our teeth," he said comfortingly, "and they'll find we haven't been diminished. We're still the fiercest and the strongest. We will tear them apart."

He knew Farfarello would like the imagery and he was right. Far let out a soft growling purr and pressed against Crawford's side. Crawford bent and kissed his cold forehead.

"You still see it," he murmured.

Farfarello looked up at him, lips almost brushing. "Every waking hour. Every dream."

"What would you do," he wondered, smirking slightly, "in the peace of Eden?"

Farfarello's answer was prompt and characteristically simple. "Master the earth. Live well. Love you."

Crawford tilted his head down and the kiss was sweet and slow, though kissing Farfarello was never without a certain amount of ferocity. One had to learn to see the tenderness in it. Snowflakes drifted cold against his nose. Far's lips were icy and his tongue was hot, and when his teeth grazed Crawford's lower lip, he wound around the other man and crushed him against him. He felt Farfarello's hands in woolen gloves tangle in his hair and tug almost hard enough to be painful.

When they broke away to breathe, they were both panting. It was too cold for anything else, so Crawford just held him, glad that bruising force bothered Far not at all. The stillness of the lake made him feel peaceful down to his bones, and he wondered if this was why Farfarello had sought out the lake-side bench.

Farfarello began to speak softly. "We are not the first to have this dream," he breathed. "Or the first to ache for that Eden. This world with its long history of imperfection and brokenness, this fallen earth, torments everyone's hearts. The only difference is in those who recognize the hole for what it is."

"There is no perfection," Crawford replied against his hair. "Not now or ever."

"There doesn't need to be perfection if there can be worth," Farfarello told him. "A hint of something that drives poets to mad ramblings, impossible to quantify or portray. Our feeble human languages allow only the vaguest echoes, but at some deep level, we understand. And we WANT."

"What do you want?"

He felt Farfarello smile, felt the weight in the silence that stretched out between them, felt the composure of his words when he spoke.

"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,  
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;  
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,  
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,  
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;  
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,  
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore;  
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,  
I hear it in the deep heart's core."

"Sometimes," Crawford said at length, "I forget about your memory."

Farfarello chuckled softly.

A hint of breeze stirred and sent the snow spinning and tumbling, and Crawford hunched his shoulders against it. "If I offer you hot chocolate and Bailey's by the fireplace," he said, forcing his teeth not to chatter, "will you come inside?"

Far offered him a sly smirk, single golden eye heavy-lidded. Crawford couldn't be sure what was going through his head, but that was the novelty of Farfarello - he never knew what the other man was going to do next, and while he felt he knew his lover well, Far still had something no one else in Crawford's life had ever possessed - the ability to surprise him.

"I'll come inside," he agreed, and nipped at Crawford's lower lip again.

With the promise of warmth to be had soon, Crawford responded with immediate ferocity and was gratified to hear Far growl approvingly. They tilted on the bench, Crawford settling on top of his lover and clutching at him through too many layers of clothes. He felt Far hitch up against him and groaned, and at length rolled off of him and helped him up. Farfarello was grinning like a post-canary cat, and Crawford shot him a fake annoyed look as he composed himself.

They walked back to their home shoulder to shoulder, in companionable silence, another reason Crawford had found their unlikely pairing far more pleasurable than he would ever have anticipated. Farfarello had no need to fill empty spaces with meaningless words. He spoke when he had something to say, and enjoyed the intervening quiet. He didn't require constant affirmation or attention, and was content to leave Crawford to his own pursuits so long as he could be reasonably close by with his work or a book or his Walkman and headphones.

Not that Crawford planned to get any work done that evening. He stripped off his winter gear with relief and hung it in the closet, letting the warmth of the house embrace him. Farfarello, of course, was not uncomfortable in the least, as he was barely affected by temperature. He went to the kitchen to start the hot chocolate and saw Farfarello disappear into the living room, where the fireplace was already ablaze. Crawford had built up the fire before going out to find Far, and it burned most evenings in the winter. He mixed two large mugs and added two shots of Bailey's Irish Cream to each, topped them with whipped cream, and headed for the living room.

Farfarello had stripped down further, removing the thermal t-shirt and soft sweater he'd been wearing under his coat. His skin was beginning to flush from his near-dangerous proximity to the fire as he sat on the hearth, clad only in his jeans and thick winter socks. Crawford started to smile, then faltered slightly when he saw the comforter and soft throw Farfarello had spread across the floor in front of the hearth, scattered with pillows from the couch and easy chair. Suddenly he wished he had a free hand to adjust his own pants. He set the two mugs on the coffee table and sat down on the blankets. Farfarello immediately left the hearth to stalk him on all fours, every movement a study in predatory grace, muscles rippling under that pallid skin crossed with scars. Gorgeous.

Crawford pounced him and they tumbled together to the floor, and the fire crackled, multi-colored glass balls jangling slightly from the branches of the nearby fir tree while they groped and clutched and finally melted together.

Outside, the snow fell. 


End file.
